Back on track!

Here I am, back on track, tracking my calories again. It's a new year and a new start and it's been a good day!

Of course, I've been starving all day, but that's just the lack of holiday junk food talking. The first day back tracking calories is always the hardest. Tomorrow will be hard, but easier than today. And if I can make it past 3 days of calorie counting, I'm golden. The it just becomes... routine. And really, I like it once it gets to be routine. I don't feel hungry, it doesn't take long for me to remember what a "normal" portion size is like, and my food scale and I become best buds again. It's great. Once I get past these first 3 days.

But the good news is that I drank a ton of water trying to curb my munchy hunger. It didn't really help with the hunger, but it kept me busy and I logged about 3 liters of water today. That's good news for someone with a pop addiction! Of course, it helps that we got a carbonator over Christmas, so I can drink fizzy water now. It helps curb the pop craving and it doesn't have any additives, extra salt, or artificial sweeteners! It's my new favorite thing.

I managed to get up this morning and do Coach Nicole's 12 minute Pilates ab workout, followed by 45 minutes on the treadmill (at 3.5 mph at 3% incline, for a 355 calorie workout), and I even tossed in 12 "real" push ups for good measure. Mostly I tossed those in to see how many sequential "real" push ups I could do. 12's the limit it seems. I'd like to build that number up. But that's not the point right now...

The point is that at the end of the day, eating 3 meals, snacking as needed to curb the hunger pangs of a belly that's been given anything it wants for a month, drinking water at every turn, and counting every calorie I put in my (not as) little (as I'd like it to be) body, I ended the day alright. Here are today's stats (with my goals in parentheses)

Calories: 1367 (1200-1550)
Fat: 29 (32-56)
Carbs: 224 (163-236)
Protein: 59 (60-127)
Fiber: 25 (25-35)

I even ate some MUFAs today, at least with breakfast and lunch. I don't know about dinner, unless whole wheat spaghetti has MUFAs in it. Hmmm....

So, I'll take it. If I can keep doing this I think I'll be on a good path to being in better shape. And I'd like to be in better shape. I'd like to be healthy, I'd like to be happy, and I'd like to look good.

Happy New Year!

Up a smidge today

I'm up to 119.0 this morning, but it's still under my goal for Monday, so I'm okay with it! I did manage to get in a 200 calorie DDR workout last night, and even though I didn't eat a terribly balanced set of foods yesterday (no breakfast, a slice and a half of pizza for lunch, no snacks, and 2 fajitas for dinner) I stayed just under 1200 calories, so that was good! I was sure I would have to do a 400 calorie workout to make up for the extras on my fajitas (I put some cheddar cheese on! mmm!) but it turned out fine. Oh, and I got all my water in, though the last liter was just before bed and I had to get up in the middle of the night because of it! I never do that, not even when I was pregnant! Then Ellie woke up at the unheard of hour of 6 am and came to find us, then crawled into bed with us and played. Combine those and I am fairly tired this morning!

Today marks the start of Sweet Pea. We always eat at Sweet Pea, so I'm going to have to make sure I'm really careful this year. Tonight we are going to watch the main act and instead of getting food there I'm going to make some chicken kabobs (a new recipe I've never tried, so it should be interesting!) and we'll eat a picnic dinner. That should be nice! Maybe I'll have time to head into town a little early (or stop by Albertson's on the way back from the splash park) and get some Splenda pop. I've really been wanting pop and so far I've resisted the full sugar stuff we have left over from the camping trip. It would be nice to take some with me tonight to enjoy, especially if I get all my water in before then!

The Quest for Aspartame Free Pop

I had no idea when I swore off Aspartame that it would be so hard to find a diet soda sweetened with sucralose (Splenda) instead. I swore I saw some Sprite or 7 Up last summer that was aspartame free. But it looks like my choices are not so plentiful. There's Diet Coke with Splenda, which tastes NASTY and isn't carried at our Walmart or Costco, the two places we usually buy our groceries. And then there's Hansen's.

I am very excited about Hansen's Diet Soda. It's more expensive, for sure, at about $0.50 a can (at least at Albertsons, where we found it last night) but they have 8 flavors (at least on their website - we'll see how many we can actually get here in the valley) and they're all calorie free and aspartame free. WOOHOOO! Now we just have to see if Costco carries the diet Hansen's (we know they carry the regular) and if Walmart does. Then we can see where to get them the cheapest. I'll still be trying to wean myself off pop for the most part, but at least now I won't feel like I'm killing myself while I drink it.

Of course, in 5 years they may say Splenda causes all sorts of problems, too, but I will live in blissful ignorance until then.